Fed: Army chaplain tells of grandfather at Gallipoli

AAP General News (Australia)
04-25-2010
Fed: Army chaplain tells of grandfather at Gallipoli

CANBERRA, April 25 AAP - As dawn broke over the Australian War Memorial in Canberra,
Army senior chaplain Catie Inches-Ogden recalled how her grandfather had fought at Gallipoli
then returned to Australia - unlike so many of his "colleagues".

Reverend Inches-Ogden, who presided at the recent reburial of soldiers killed in the
1916 Battle of Fromelles, told the gathered crowd, undeterred by overnight rain, that
her grandfather, aged 21, travelled from Egypt to Gallipoli in 1915 as a member of the
Australian Light Horse Regiment and survived the savage fighting at Gallipoli.

He met his future wife, an army nurse, returning to Australia in 1919 on the same ship.

"They married soon after. The story is the stuff of movies but it is not the story
for many of my grandfather's Anzac colleagues," she said.

Among those present at the service was Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and, in the absence
of Governor-General Quentin Bryce who is attending the service at Gallipoli, her stand-in,
the administrator of the Commonwealth of Australia, West Australian governor Dr Ken Michael.

Reverend Inches-Ogden said many who survived Gallipoli found themselves serving out
the war on the Western Front in France and Belgium.

"Can you imagine how it must have been for those men who survived the trauma of Gallipoli
only to find themselves caught in the intense German artillery bombardment and small arms
fire, watching their mates being wounded or killed," she said.

"This is the stuff of nightmares. Yet in the midst of this horror and bloodshed emerged
stories of sacrifice, of courage and compassion, green shoots of humanity in the barren
waste of war."

Reverend Inches-Ogden said what emerged from Gallipoli and the Western Front were stories
of ordinary people behaving in extraordinary ways.

"The lives and the legacies of the Anzacs incite us as ordinary Australians to live
our lives in extraordinary ways," she said.

"To live in relationships, our homes and our workplaces so that compassion, justice
and hope may abound. And to live so that depression, violence and despair are diminished."

Reverend Inches-Ogden said some in Australia did not like Anzac Day, believing it glorified
war but they had missed the point.

"The lives and sacrifices of the Anzacs invite us today to live with hope, with compassion
and integrity in our daily lives and in our relationships," she said.

AAP mb/jm

KEYWORD: ANZAC DAWN ACT WRAP

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